60 Minutes - 02/26/2023: Kherson Under Fire and The Girls of Sola

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

One year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Holly Williams is in Kherson, the first major Ukrainian city and only regional capital captured by the Russian Army. Residents of Kherson endured a brutal occupation until the Ukrainian army forced the Russians to retreat. After U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan and the country fell to the Taliban, Afghan girls have been barred from school beyond 6th grade. Lesley Stahl travels to meet a group of Afghan girls who are continuing their education in an unlikely place, the African nation of Rwanda. The girls are students of a school called SOLA, led by a remarkable Afghan woman whose commitment to educating girls began under the first Taliban regime, when she attended a secret school disguised as a boy.   To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Why are you still here? If you were this old, where would you go? What has happened to the women of Afghanistan since the American military left Kabul? To find out, we went, of course, to Rwanda. Yes, Rwanda. How are you all doing? Great. This is the story of a brave Afghan woman who helped evacuate more than 200 Afghan girls and educators to safety in Africa,

where they're studying in hopes of one day returning to their homeland. You think that you'll become leaders? Yes. I want to be a surgeon. I want to help poor people in Afghanistan. I want to be a politician. I want to help poor people in Afghanistan. I want to be a politician. A politician? Yeah.

And finally, from Zahra. I want to be a spy. A spy? Yeah. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi.

I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer,

a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile, Different is calling. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO VI Porter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash viporter to learn more. Tonight, Holly Williams on assignment for 60 Minutes. In the year since Russia invaded its neighbour, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin's army has succeeded in capturing just one regional capital, the city of Kherson. It was a key objective in the Kremlin's attempt to seize Ukraine's Black Sea coast. The eight-month occupation of Kherson ended in November, when Ukraine's army forced the Russians to retreat back across

the Dnipro River. But the city's residents are now under fire almost every day, from enemy artillery positioned less than a mile away. We visited Hereson this month, and from what we witnessed, Russia's goal appears to be the destruction of what it cannot control. When we drove alongside the river, we didn't let the speedometer dip below 70 miles an hour. On one bank is the city.

On the other, Russian tanks, artillery and snipers. A fast-moving target is hard to hit. People in our city, they are the target. The enemy is crazy. Halina Lyhova used to be a schoolteacher and a city council member. Ukraine's president put Lyhova in charge of rebuilding Kherson. Effectively, it's mayor. We watched as she managed aid distribution, power outages and an avalanche of problems caused by Russian shelling.

Kherson has been shelled more than 2,000 times in the last three months. Is there a pattern to what the Russians are hitting with the shelling, or is it random? During a long period of occupation, for eight months, they knew all the information for our infrastructure. So they know everything. They know all the information for our infrastructure. So they know everything. Because they occupied the city, they know where the schools are. They know where the humanitarian aid points are. Yes, they know.

Would you prefer it if all civilians left the city? It will be better for them, I think. You know, our people go to bed every day, and they don't know exactly if we'll be awake in the morning. It's really terrible. Before the war, 300,000 people lived in Kherson. Now about 60,000 remain. More than 80 people have been killed by the shelling.

This fire station and 19 medical facilities have been hit. Nothing, it seems, is sacred. There's a bomb crater right outside the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross. Inside, it was below freezing. 84-year-old Valentina Syrik told us she was asking God to give the Russians common sense. It's very dangerous in Harrison now. Why are you still here? If you were this old, where would you go? She asked us. It's the elderly and those without the means to leave who have stayed.

That's where it landed, is that right? We pulled up to this apartment building just hours after it took a direct hit. Irina Barandich was cleaning up the damage to her sister's apartment up on the fourth floor. She's OK. Nobody was hurt. Elena lives in one of only three apartments still occupied. Why would they hit your building? Because they simply want to annihilate Ukrainians, she said. What other reason could there be?

They've grown used to cleaning up the debris in Kherson. But so much more has been shattered. And with the war, it is almost no people here. In English, we would call it a ghost town. Katya Fativa has refused to leave Kherson, despite offers of a place to stay from friends outside Ukraine. Her son Max, who's nine years old, started piano lessons last summer. Fativa told us it's been a good distraction because it's unsafe to go outside and play. We still believe that everything will be good sooner and our victory will come and our life will return to our ordinary way. Why are you so certain that things will go back to normal? We are on our land and we believe we are Ukrainians and we want to live in Ukraine and nothing will change this, you see?

Nothing. You heard that, right? Yes. It's as if nothing happened. You don't shake, you don't even turn your head. No. You got used to it. Yes, we have got used to this, all this.

Because every bomb, every attack will take us to our victory. Herson's defiance was obvious as the Kremlin's troops rolled into town last March. Thousands demonstrated. Within days, Russian soldiers opened fire and began arresting protesters. Residents were ordered to use Russian currency and schools were told to adopt a Russian curriculum. Fativa would have none of it.

We continued studying in our Ukrainian school by Zoom, online, with our teachers, with our programs. That was illegal. Yes, of course, it was illegal from their side, but they tried to take our children there. The Russians wanted to control what your children were thinking, what they learned. Yes, yes, you're absolutely right.

They really want to control our people's mind, what to do, what not to do and so on. We realised where Fativa's courage came from when we met her father. Vladimir Sagayak manages a foster home just outside the city. After hearing reports that Ukrainian children were being deported to Russia, Sagayak decided to hide 46 kids in his care. He placed some of the children with their distant relatives. The rest were sent off with foster home staff.

Fake documents helped them get past Russian checkpoints. What are these stories you came up with to explain new children appearing in families? We had a young kindergarten teacher who took in five kids from 5 to 16 years of age. And we worked out a story for her, that her sister was in her last month of pregnancy, and she was looking after her sister's kids. With the help of Photoshop, we created a doctor's note.

That's how they got through. More than 6,000 Ukrainian children have been taken into Russian custody since the war began, according to research by Yale University. This is security camera video from the day last June when Russian soldiers came to Vladimir Sagayak's foster home. He told them he'd sent the children back to their families. If the Russians had found out exactly what you did, that you hid 46 children,

what do you think they might have done to you? I think I would not be talking to you today. Hundreds of others who resisted were brought to this place, known as the pit. And then what's this to the right here? Andrei Andreshenko told us he was tortured here with electric shocks to his head and genitals. Tied you to the chair. People he knew were being beaten in adjoining cells. You could hear the screams of your friends... Every time. ..while they were being tortured.

Every time, yes. His crime was painting pro-Ukrainian graffiti. But by November, the occupiers lost their grip on Kherson. Squeezed between the advancing Ukrainian army and the river, they withdrew. The sounds of celebration were soon replaced by this, the new tyranny of Russian artillery. The whole thing's underground.

It's too risky for Mayor Halina Lehova and her team to work in the town hall. Secretary here. So the administration of a city the size of St. Louis has been crammed into this basement. There are a lot of problems we have and you see the people who solve them. And I'm just noticing it's nearly all women. There are a lot of women here also, yes, that's right. Girls, we have a lot of women here also, yes, that's right.

They've had to improvise. To keep the buses running, parts have been salvaged from those hit by shells. And the heat at this hospital is off most days, so that wisps of steam don't catch the attention of Russian artillery spotters. I've heard that you like to describe Kherson as invincible. Neslamne. Neslamne. Why did you choose that word?

We are unbreakable. All the people of Ukraine are unbreakable. But Luhova believes Russian collaborators still lurk in the city. They phone them to the left bank of the river and say, there I am, where our team is, what we are doing. They say everything. Feeding information to the Russians. Yes.

And telling them what to hit. Yes. Yes. It's true. And what should happen to hit. Yes. Yes. It's true. And what should happen to those collaborators now? We have to kill them. I think that they have no right to live.

No right to live? No right to live. It was the bluntness of a person who's been targeted by Russian artillery seven times. The enemy is in front of us on the left bank of the river and this place is very dangerous. They're a few hundred yards away. This is my house.

This was your house? Yes. Lehova left Harrison for six months during the occupation because she feared she'd be killed. While she was gone, her house was burned down. She blames the collaborators. All I had during my life, this is my house. We all together built this house with the family,

with my husband and with my two sons. It's a tragedy. A tragedy. For me and for people. Helena Lujova told us she tries not to sleep in the same place two nights in a row and travels in an armoured van. It's dangerous, but I have to do my work. I have to help people.

I have to be with them with humanitarian aids. It's my duty, so I do it. This city will remain under fire... ..so long as the Russians are on the opposite side of the river. Only if Ukraine's military can push them back will Katya Fativa's son enjoy a walk outside with his grandfather. Do you think Harrison will ever go back to what it was like before? I am sure it will become much, much better because people have changed.

Our minds have changed. Maybe sometimes we didn't understand really that we are Ukrainians. And now with the help of this war, we understand who we are, what we want, and most important, we understand what we don't want. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling

the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Whatever your view of the U.S. decision to end America's longest war and withdraw troops from Afghanistan, that country's fall to the Taliban in August of 2021 has unquestionably plunged that nation once again into a deep crisis. Millions are facing famine and the economy's in shambles. Those suffering the most are Afghan women and girls. The Taliban has closed

girls' schools beyond sixth grade and just recently barred women from universities. That means that girls are banned from anything beyond a grade school education. Tonight, though, we're going to tell you a story of hope about a group of Afghan girls who are in school. They're at a school called SOLA, the Afghan word for peace, and also short for School of Leadership Afghanistan. It was started by a young Afghan woman named Shabana Basish Rasuk, who knows firsthand the power of an education. And though they had to flee Afghanistan in a harrowing escape, we found the girls of Sola back in the classroom, half a world away. These are the busy streets of Kigali, Rwanda, a landlocked African nation that was once the site of a horrific genocide that killed nearly a million and left two million refugees. Rwanda is now at peace and has become an

unlikely place of refuge for the last year and a half to the girls of Sola, And they seem to be settling in. Are you ready? Yes. The evening we arrived at SOLA's temporary campus here, the sixth and seventh grades were holding a geography competition. Classes here are taught in English. The girls were racing to identify nearly 200 countries all around the globe. They're wearing masks not to protect against COVID, but to hide their identities to protect their families still in Afghanistan. My name is Zahra. Zahra's family has left the country so she can show her face.

Soraya's and Najia's are still there. You knew every country in the world. Yes. You like it? Yeah. You like contests? Shabana Basij Rasuk is Sola's founder and single-minded leader. How are you all doing? Great. At 32 and just over 5 feet tall, Shabana started creating SOLA when she was still a student herself. Her story and her commitment to educating girls goes back to 1996, when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban the first time.

She was 6 years old, and all girls' schools were closed. But Shabana's parents, a former general and an educator, refused to keep their daughters locked up at home. They heard about a secret school run out of a former principal's living room and saw an opportunity, despite the danger, for Shabana and her older sister to be educated.

The Taliban did not allow women to go outside alone, so my parents dressed me up as a boy so that I could accompany my sister to and from that secret school. That was the best way that both of us could receive an education. Oh, my God. So they dressed you as a boy. My mom cut my hair. I wore boys' clothes. Pants. Pants and T-shirt and, yeah, bus cut.

And the family carefully mapped out their routes. You know, you take different streets every day so that you don't create a routine. The same shopkeeper at a certain convenience store should not notice you every day. So you were always afraid, or they were always afraid you'd get caught. They never knew when or if we would return home. But even after a close call where Shabana and her sister were followed and begged their parents to stop sending them to school, her mom and dad said no. They told us things like, you could be forced to leave your home.

You could be forced to become a refugee. You could lose any material possessions that you have. But the one thing that can never be taken away from you is your education. When the Taliban fell after the U.S. invasion in 2001, Shabana went to a real school for the first time, and she excelled, winning a place in a State Department program to spend a year of high school in the U.S. I was randomly placed with this lovely host family in Wisconsin,

where I gained 40 pounds. But that wasn't the only way the year changed her. What struck me the most was living in a society for the first time in my life where girls had no concerns whatsoever that their freedom to attend school could be taken away from them anytime, which is something that every single Afghan girl who's lucky enough to go to school lives with. And you can't blame them, can you? No, I can't, because Afghanistan is the only country in the world that won't let girls go to school. Yeah. So, um...

Why are you tearing up? That Afghanistan's the only country? Mm-hmm. Shabana's commitment to her homeland runs deep. When she got a scholarship to attend Middlebury College in Vermont, she started working not on building a great life for herself in the U.S., but what she could do for Afghanistan. Her answer? Start a school.

And by the time she graduated in 2011, an early version of SOLA was already up and running in Kabul. I heard that it's different. It's a leadership program. Fatima was an early Sola student. You were encouraged to speak up? Yes. You like that?

Yeah, yeah. I was like, wow. I thought, like, it's such an awesome school. Fatima's two younger sisters, Aideen and Sajia, took notice. Sajia got in next. And I was like, well, next year it's my turn. Aideen remembers trying to impress Shabana, the school's founder, in her interview. I was, like, reading a lot of books, and I was writing their summaries down. And I was like, you know what? I should take this and show her, like, I'm a smart kid.

It worked. Aydin started as a sixth grader in 2016, the year Sola expanded to become a full-fledged 6th to 12th grade girls' boarding school, the only one in Afghanistan funded as a U.S. nonprofit through grants and donations. There were daily assemblies and the school's own special Pledge of Allegiance.

We all are Afghans. We love Afghanistan. We will try our best and work hard to improve this beautiful country. Shabana's goal was both to educate her students and serve the nation by training a generation of leaders from Afghanistan's various regions and religious sects. My roommate was Shia and I was Sunni and it was my first time to talk to a Shia girl. And it was so interesting to hear from her.

Do you deliberately want the children of conservative families? We certainly create an environment in which even the most conservative families in Afghanistan would feel comfortable sending their daughters. Do they? They do. Do you teach the Quran? We do. For these young women to be effective leaders of Afghanistan, they have to be great Muslims, great Afghans, and highly educated. At the start of 2021, Sola was thriving. Shabana had secured land in Kabul, and construction was underway on a new campus. There were a record number of applications, with students enrolled from all over the country. And Sola graduates were doing just what Shabana had envisioned.

Fatima had finished college and was working at the Afghan Ministry of Finance. I was a professional woman. I was contributing. I also had all my friends who were educated women and men as well. So there was a little community. Yes. But the Trump administration had been negotiating with a newly emboldened Taliban, promising a withdrawal of U.S. troops. And then in April of 2021, President Biden announced an unconditional exit. I've concluded that it's time to end America's longest war.

It's time for American troops to come home. I knew then that it was a matter of time before it was going to be irresponsible of me to run an all-girls boarding school in Kabul. She came up with the idea of taking the whole solar community, students and staff, abroad for a semester while the American withdrawal played out. So she started searching for a country, ideally one nearby, that would accept them. But the warmest response she got, by far, was from Rwanda. And she grabbed it. We're going to go to a place called Rwanda. Did you know anything?

We all went and searched, and then we found out that it was in Africa. And I was like, wow. Oh my God, I'm so excited. Some of Sola's alums, including Sajia and Fatima, were asked to come as well. So was the idea at that moment that you were escaping and that you weren't going to come back for a while? No. The idea was that the security is getting worse. We would live for a semester, and then if the security gets better, we would come back. If not, we would stay there for a year or more. What was the atmosphere in Kabul at that point?

The provinces were falling one after another, but then we were not hoping for Kabul to fall this soon. The U.S. government wasn't expecting Kabul to fall soon either. As American soldiers prepared for an announced end-of-August departure, Sola brought in passport officials on August 14th to process the girls' paperwork for flights a few days later. They worked into the night, but unbeknownst to all of them, it was too late. The Taliban were closing in and would enter Kabul in just a few hours. It was 5 a.m. in the morning when I got a knock on my door. One of my teachers came and said that,

you guys have to leave Sula in five minutes. And I said that, why? And she said, if the Taliban come, they will know that here is a school and they will kill all of us. All of the girls were shouting and all of us crying, what should we do? Taliban came to the Kabul and took all of Kabul. In the chaos of the Taliban takeover and government collapse, Sola quickly sent students home with teachers and staff. Shabana scrambled to transform what was to be an orderly departure into a sudden, life-threatening escape. But first, she had to

keep a promise, one she'd made years earlier to a student's father. He said, promise me when the Taliban come to Kabul that you will burn my daughter's records if they find out that she's a student here, and they will kill me and my family. So Shabana did something heartbreaking. Set fire in the school's furnace and courtyard to the hard-earned records of all of Sola's students. It was incredibly painful. It felt like making them disappear. The girls of Sola, their escape from Kabul, and how they're doing today when we come back.

Most of us remember the desperate, frantic crowds trying to get out of Kabul after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. Among them were the students, teachers, staff, and staff families of Sola, 256 people in all. Sola's founder, Shabana Basish Rasouk, managed to get all of them on U.S.-approved lists to leave the country. But getting them into the airport was another matter altogether. There were a series of Taliban checkpoints, so arriving together as a girls' school was out of the question. Sola divided the students into groups, with many posing as the children of staff members. The call went out for all the groups to head to the airport on the morning of August 17th.

The previous day had been chaos. People had been clinging to airplanes and crowds had descended on the airport. Sisters Fatima, Sajia and Aideen prepared to go there together. We had our masks. We made sure our scarves are put tightly. And we were wearing very long dresses. When we left, my mom was telling us to make sure that you don't do eye contact with tulips. So we were just really scared, and then it was just like... If I look down, they won't look at me. Yes. By the time we got closer to the airport, it was so crowded.

The weather is hot, and I have this black scarf and black mask, and it's suffocating. People were pushing each other and shouting, and all of the babies crying. I saw Taliban that they were shooting the guns and also the... They were shooting guns? Like the bullets. This guy.

Someone took my scarf. It was in my head and then someone and the Taliban saw me and they shouted and I said that they will kill me now. As a teacher quickly handed Najia a scarf, Fatima and her sisters were being jostled by the crowd. Everybody was pushing, and in a moment, I noticed that my sisters aren't there. At one point, she was gone. So now it's just the two of you. I remember sitting there and then crying, and I was like, I didn't want to go.

Can we just stop here, you know? Let's just go back. Honestly, I understand. I probably would have done just what you did. It was a tragedy, you know, with women having like their very young kids. I was like, I just can't take this anymore. I really didn't know what to do because she was not listening to me. And then one of Sula teachers came and and told her that you got to stand up, go, or stay here forever. And then I took her hand and then we went. The three sisters were among more than 100 Sula students and staff, including Shabana, who made it into the U.S. military-controlled airport to safety that day and were processed to leave on waiting jets. Shabana was told her

name was on a Taliban hit list, so she should get out right away with them. But all the other students and teachers were still stuck in the crowds outside. Shabana refused to go. I knew if I left, it was game over. Those who were stuck at different checkpoints had no way of getting through. People were pushing gas in there. One of them was Zahra. Talban was saying sit, and there was no place to sit. Zahra's group and others had to turn back while Shabana spent her first sleepless night inside the airport. After two more days of waiting in these throngs, one last group of 52 was still stuck. Shabana asked a U.S. Marine captain to accompany her out of the safety of the airport and back to the Taliban checkpoint.

Captain Nicholas Gray grabbed two members of his team and said, let's do this. You were in the airport and went out? And then went back. This is what you do. You have 10-year-old girls, 11-year-old girls, 15-year-old girls stuck on the other side. You do anything you can to get them to safety. And she shouted, and I pushed, I pushed, I pushed, and I get her hand. And she pulled you? Yeah. Oh my goodness. These pictures were taken as the very last group of students and Shabana, after three days and two nights in that airport, boarded the military transport plane that would at last fly them away. She had managed to get everyone out, 256 people.

You have to say to yourself, I did it, it's over. I got everybody out. It was finally having a moment to think about, oh, my God, this is it. Oh, oh, my God, this is it. Oh, oh my God, this is it. So now you're looking to the future. We're leaving, you know, and I was taking with me from Afghanistan

some of the best educated girls, women leaders in the making. I felt so heartbroken for our people, for Afghanistan. I felt heartbrokenbroken for our people, for Afghanistan. I felt heartbroken for the very people who are leaving. They are some of the most wanted talent in Afghanistan. And as soon as they step outside of this airport, they're going to be seen as unwanted refugees wherever they end up. Hello.

Good morning. But her students are having a completely different experience. In Rwanda, they have been welcomed. Good morning. How are you today? We found them dressed in new school uniforms, since each of them had fled with just a backpack. I love what you're wearing. Thank you. They're hand-sewn with Rwandan patterns

to honor their adopted home. Do you like it here? Yeah. You wouldn't know they've been away from their families for more than a year. Thank you. Sola's temporary campus here feels like a haven. It's a former hotel complex. It's restaurant now a dining hall, with classrooms converted from hotel suites. They're getting on with the business of learning, mastering math terms in English. With many of their Afghan teachers now resettled as refugees in other countries, Sola has brought in new teachers from abroad. This is a school for leadership. Yeah.

You think that you'll become leaders? Yeah, of course. I want to be a surgeon. I want to help poor people in Afghanistan. I want to be a politician. A politician? Yeah. Sor I want to be a politician. A politician? Yeah.

Soraya wants to be an astronaut. Space woman. And finally, from Zahra... I want to be a spy. A spy? Yeah. That came out of nowhere. How are the girls doing?

Our students, our girls have been consistently and remarkably focused. It is beyond inspiring to see these young girls who know. They have no idea when they are going to be able to reunite with their families. But though they're more than 3,000 miles away, it is the 21st century. One of the most striking scenes we saw here was the daily hour after classes end when girls can call their families. Watching them scattered around the room is to feel the tremendous separation. But Shabana also sees the closeness. Yesterday I was watching swimming practice. One of them said, I've been wanting to learn how to float for such a long time and I can finally do it today. And I asked her, I said, do you share these kinds of moments with your family? She said,

I share every single thing with my family. And they are so happy for me. They tell me that they are happy because I am happy. What's the reception been like in Rwanda? Remarkable doesn't quite capture it. I've had this conversation with so many Rwandans saying, please don't forget, we were also once refugees. Here we are, back in Rwanda. You will go back home, but for the time being,

welcome home to Rwanda. Why does that happen? Did I throw it? No. On Earth, there is gravity. Watching these girls learn, Jupiter, Mars. we were struck by the realization

that they're among the only Afghan middle and high school girls out of a country of 40 million who are getting a formal education. Title slide, picture, title name. But knowing how fortunate they are has made hearing the news from Afghanistan that much more painful. Fatima's female co-workers at the Ministry of Finance have all been replaced. My female colleagues received phone calls saying that they should send one of their male family members to work instead of them.

So wait a minute. They were being told to send male relatives to take their jobs? As long as they can do the job, they should send them. Last March, the Taliban announced that girls' schools would reopen. Girls flocked in, only to be told hours later to go home and stay there. All over social media were videos of these young girls crying. And then I was so mad on everybody for not doing anything. You mean the rest of the world? This bunch of men has taken the control of the entire country, and then they're doing whatever they want.

Women have been ordered to cover themselves head to toe again. They're banned from public parks, and just months ago banned from universities as well. History repeating itself. And if there's one member of the solar community who understands what Afghan girls today are facing, it's Mariam, the school's longtime cleaning woman and now seamstress. She knows the power of an education because she never got one. The Taliban were in power at that time. I mean, the first time the Taliban were in power. I was not allowed to go to school. Girls could not study. Miriam, can you read or write?

I would really like to, but I can't. If I could have gone to school, I would have been very happy. It was very hard for me. But there is something that makes her happy these days, watching her 9th grade daughter, Zarmina, who is now a student at Sola. Talking about Zarmina's future, we finally saw Mariam smile. Are you proud of your daughter? Yes, yes, yes.

We cannot, under any circumstances, submit to Taliban's vision for Afghanistan. And what does that mean for us? It means continue to educate more Afghan girls. But how? Well, she's recruiting them over Zoom from Afghan refugee communities and camps in countries around the world to bring them here to Rwanda. What should the U.S. government be doing, in your view? The one thing that the U.S. policymakers cannot, cannot afford to do is to forget about Afghanistan. Do not look away. Do not look away from Afghanistan.

I cannot emphasize that enough. And what she wants them to see, alongside the ongoing tragedy in that country, is Sola's vision. Educated girls committed to one day being leaders of a different Afghanistan. We all are Afghans, they say. We love Afghanistan. We will try our best and work hard to improve our beautiful country. You say this every day? Yeah. We repeat it every day that it's in our heart. Do you all think you'll go back? Yeah, of course we will go.

Is it possible that you won't go back to Afghanistan? Is it possible? I spend every waking hour preparing for a return. It will happen. I've borrowed a stone from the airport. I need to return. Next Sunday on 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper visits with David Byrne, the legendary and legendarily quirky frontman of Talking Heads. The name of this band is Talking Heads.

So I wanted to be very matter-of-fact. It's not like, are we having fun tonight? Yeah, there's none of that. How you all doing? How you all doing? New York! New York! David Byrne still can't relax. At 70, he continues to turn out innovative music, art, and dance.

I'm John Wertheim. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.